Game in Old Movies

I recently re-watched the original version of Sabrina.  A few points about it are interesting in light of game.

The story is about the chauffeur's daughter and the two sons of the house.  The older son is hardworking, serious, and responsible.  The younger son is irresponsible, married repeatedly, and cannot hold a job.  Which son do you suppose that she lusts after?

He ignores her until she returns from a school in France with a new dress and haircut.  At this point he forgets most everything but her.  An she then decides that she prefers the older brother.

The hardworking guy seems to be boring and she ignores him.  She prefers the rascal who ignores her.  Once her rascal gives her all of his affections, she decides that she does not like him anymore.  She also seems to realize that the boring guy is better and runs away with him instead.  She decided that the guy who always did what he wanted was not so boring after all.

Watching old movies with knowledge of game makes them much more interesting.

Numb as a Statue

Obamacare Lies are More Obvious Than You'd Think

It would be nice if these were sourced better.

from here:

Most of us who were opposed to Obamacare already knew about this one.

MYTH OF 50 MILLION UNINSURED

For example, we were told that there were as many as 50 million uninsured people in this country. But as Atlas explained, that number was greatly exaggerated.

First, as we discussed on this blog previously, somewhere between 10 and 15 million of that group are not U.S. citizens. That may be a problem, but it’s more of an immigration problem. That does not seem like a reason to turn our health care system upside down.

What about the remaining 35-40 million? Atlas explained that those numbers came from a survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. And there were about 10 million people who said they didn’t have insurance, but did — as was discovered by cross-referencing the claims with medical records that contradicted the claims. For the most part, these people were using Medicaid, which they may not have considered insurance. Apparently people thought the question was asking about private insurance. But someone who is getting health care through Medicaid is hardly “uninsured.”

Then, it turns out that there was another group of about 13 million people who were eligible for public insurance (Medicaid, Medicare, SCHIP/CHIP) who are eligible for state health insurance but did not access it yet.

Ultimately, Atlas says “you are left with a population of less than 5% of people in the United States who don’t have insurance or who are not already eligible for current government insurance programs. I would not call that a crisis in the uninsured.” Indeed.

This is something that I always wondered about but have not heard elsewhere.  Since we're overweight doesn't that mean we will be much less healthy than the places where the people are thinner? 

Once again we learn that lots of people are killed on government run roads.

MYTH OF POOR LIFE EXPECTANCY IN U.S.

But weren’t we told that governments with more involvement in health care have better systems? For example, our life expectancy is pretty wretched according to most measures. Except Atlas points out, when you control for “suicide and immediate death from high speed motor accidents” — things where the health care system can’t save you anyway — all of a sudden we shoot to #1. Plus there is another thumb on the scale that has to do with society and not our health care system, because we are an obese society, and obesity lowers life expectancy quite a bit. But that’s not the health care system’s fault. It’s not your doctor’s fault you are fat. So if we’re #1 even with all the obesity, after you control for things doctors can’t fix, then we’re doing pretty well.

 Read some more.  Found thanks to Rhymes with Cars and Girls.

The Minimum Wage is still Stupid

In short, you can have as much unemployment as you want, simply by pushing the legally minimum wage high enough.

- Murry Rothbard, 1988

In truth, there is only one way to regard a minimum wage law: it is compulsory unemployment, period. The law says: it is illegal, and therefore criminal, for anyone to hire anyone else below the level of X dollars an hour. This means, plainly and simply, that a large number of free and voluntary wage contracts are now outlawed and hence that there will be a large amount of unemployment. Remember that the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.

All demand curves are falling, and the demand for hiring labor is no exception. Hence, laws that prohibit employment at any wage that is relevant to the market (a minimum wage of 10 cents an hour would have little or no impact) must result in outlawing employment and hence causing unemployment.

...

The advocates of the minimum wage and its periodic boosting reply that all this is scare talk and that minimum wage rates do not and never have caused any unemployment. The proper riposte is to raise them one better; all right, if the minimum wage is such a wonderful anti-poverty measure, and can have no unemployment-raising effects, why are you such pikers? Why you are helping the working poor by such piddling amounts? Why stop at $4.55 an hour? Why not $10 an hour? $100? $1,000?

If a minimum wage makes people wealthier, then why not make it $100?

This sounds like a good question to ask our friends at the Huffington Post.

Do you think that anyone will give an actual answer?

Nail Clippers

I realize that lots of people say that they don't pay much attention to guys younger than 30, or whatever, but one thing that I have figured out is to put nail clippers on your key-chain.

I don't know when the rest of you cut your fingernails, but I do it, approximately, whenever I think mine are too long.  Having nail clippers on my key-chain means that I can cut my nails whenever the mood strikes me.  And I can use the key-ring like the ring on a pair of scissors, its easier to clip with a ring rather than without one.

Nail clippers aren't good only for cutting fingernails and toenails.  I've used mine often to cut all sorts of things.  Sometimes you don't want to use your knife and you aren't allowed one in other places.  I once even used my nail clippers' file as a screwdriver to remove a license plate off of a truck, it was of of the two uses that I've ever found for that little stupid file.  The other is to punch holes in things.

Forget the bead chain, that is weak and will break.  Put the key-ring directly through the clippers.

For about $1 you can have a multipurpose tool* wherever you go.

*For the record: I really dislike multi-tools becasue they try to do lots of things badly and do nothing well.  I'd rather use a knife as my tweezers and screwdriver and whatever else, rather than one of those pieces of junk that makes you think that you have a tool when you really don't.

My Favored Tax Plan is Bad

If we must have an income tax, then I think it should be a flat tax.  If all people were created equal, then they should all be treated the same way, and taxed at the same rate.

Of course the so-called “flat tax” is not really a flat tax at all because it extracts a much higher dollar amount from those earning higher incomes than from those who earn low incomes. For example, if everyone is taxed at the same flat rate of, say, 10 percent, then the individual earning $1 million per year must pay taxes of $100,000 whereas the individual earning an annual income of $50,000 pays only $5,000. The former is thus forced to pay a price twenty times higher than the latter has to pay for the same rotten government services. How is this not a punitive tax?

-Joesph Salerno

I agree. He is right.  Since we are all equal, we should all pay the same amount, its only fair.

This phony flat tax contrasts sharply with the situation on the market where all individuals, regardless of income, pay exactly the same price for bread, tablet computers, Cadillacs, movie tickets and all of the other privately produced goods and services they buy. Now imagine if everyone were forced to pay a price in proportion to his income for everything he purchased on the market? A higher money income would no longer mean command over more goods and services. Hence, no one would have any incentive to earn a higher income by excelling at producing things consumers desired, and, as a result, productivity and the economy would come crashing down. If people truly wanted to avoid the discriminatory and punitive aspects of taxation then they would favor a “flat, flat” tax, that is an old-fashioned “capitation” or “head” tax in which everyone paid the exact same dollar amount to the government. Not only would this not penalize more productive people but, much more important, it would have to be very, very low in order to ensure that even the lowest-income people are able to afford it. I think 200 bucks a person per year sounds about right. To the bleeding hearts out there worried about the poor, I am more than willing to entertain proposals of 100 bucks, or better yet, zero. 

If you are going to insist on an income tax, then it is only fair that we all pay the same amount.  And that amount should be small so that everyone can afford to pay it.

Of course this will mean cutting government spending on the things that we can't afford...

My Book, Update

I'm writing a book on deer hunting for new deer hunters.

Time in the Tree is the working title.  This title idea was inspired by the title of the book Time on the Water by Bill Gardner.

At one time I thought that my book might read like his, as a journal of the days.  But I am a terrible journal writer and I did not take very good notes through the last hunting season.  The few thoughts that I did record may be included, but they will not be a large part of the book.

It has been day after day of no writing followed by writing several thousand words in one sitting.  I relate this point because authors are often asked about when and how they write.

As of this post I have around 14,400 words written, in MS Word, through sixteen chapter ideas.  And I have not really gotten to the actual hunting part yet.

Before writing I looked up how many words should be in a book.  The result that I got was 60,000 words.  That is my goal, sort of.  My book may be 40,000 words or 100,000.  I would like it to cover all of the necessary parts with a little bit of background information.

I realize that many books get around 1/3 of their content trimmed before being published.  This is a good idea even if my book will be self published, not published by a professional publisher.  Trim the fat.

Fully, or partially, written chapters so far:

1. Who? What? Why? When? Where? How?  
2. About the whitetail deer
3. Antlers, not horns
4. Where, generally, to hunt for deer
5. Alternatives to hunting your own private land
6. Improving your hunting property, the not so fun part
7. Improving your hunting property, the fun part
8. Food plots
9. How to make your food plots
10. Methods of hunting whitetail deer (should me moved to after "Where, generally...")
11. Stand locating
12. Trail, or game, cameras
13. Types of deer stands
14. The ideal stand
15. Treestand recommendations
16. How to place your treestand  

These are the working titles for the chapters that have been roughly written or outlined so far.

This post was written with the idea that the process of writing a book c might be interesting itself.

If you have any suggestions, or comments, for my first book, then I will be happy to hear them.

My book is about learning to hunt deer.  Perhaps this blog will include learning how to write and self publish a book. 

(The book will be better proofread than the posts here.) 

Happy hunting.